Over at Inside Higher Education, Ben Eisen has an interesting interviewwith Professor Jonathan D. Jansen, a South African who after the end of apartheid became the first black dean of education at South Africa’s very racially conservative University of Pretoria.
In his interview with Eisen, Professor Jansen talks about living between two racial cultures and compares the USA to the USA:
Universities in South Africa and the USA were formed in very similar circumstances where racial formation played crucial roles in knowledge production as well as in patterns of racial socialization and racial segregation. The book produced by Spelman’s president, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? … resonates with the South African experience; and I believe Knowledge in the Blood reflects some of the same tensions and struggles in the USA. The big difference, of course, is that blacks hold power in the Republic of South Africa while blacks remain a minority in the USA, and this has implications for the transformation of these patterns of racial division.
The product description of Jansen’s new book, Knowledge in the Blood, is very interesting and suggests other direct parallels between whites, including white youth, in both countries:
This book tells the story of white South African students—how they remember and enact an Apartheid past they were never part of. How is it that young Afrikaners, born at the time of Mandela’s release from prison, hold firm views about a past they never lived, rigid ideas about black people, and fatalistic thoughts about the future? … Jansen offers an intimate look at the effects of social and political change after Apartheid as white students first experience learning and living alongside black students. He reveals the novel role pedagogical interventions played in confronting the past, as well as critical theory’s limits in dealing with conflict in a world where formerly clear-cut notions of victims and perpetrators are blurred.
So, many white youth “hold firm views about a past they never lived, rigid ideas about black people.” Sounds like the other USA?
a study of all white people’s behavior and actions world-wide would be interesting and revealing about our common culture we Europeans spread to the world. Whites act quite identical regardless where they are and I don’t know of any European group in occupied areas/former colonies which would adapt instead of enforcing their European culture which always includes racism, on others
Actually, the Union of South Africa (USA) was the for a long time name for the country of South Africa (Union of South Africa) until the 1960s. I was playing off the old name, of course.
As for the Eurocentrism, it is certainly an important input into the white racial frame, but the Americans of European descent after several generations have made the dominant white racial frame a bit more Americentric or white-centric than Eurocentric. It is useful, actually, to read the work of people in some detail before making snap judgements on this. Try the last six of my books on this, and you will see what I mean by the white racial frame….
Joe, your wordgame doesn’t make any sense, most of all when the quote you use talks about the Republic of South Africa. Also, the RSA of today is not the same like the Union of South Africa, which included South West Africa, today known as Namibia
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>As for the Eurocentrism, it is certainly an important input into the white racial frame, but the Americans of European descent after several generations have made the dominant white racial frame a bit more Americentric or white-centric than Eurocentric. It is useful, actually, to read the work of people in some detail before making snap judgements on this. Try the last six of my books on this, and you will see what I mean by the white racial frame….
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you forget how America Americanizes the world and you also seem to be unaware of the history of Americans as occupying force and culturally influental in Germany. American military introduced some Jim Crow practices in postwar Germany, unfortunately.
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It is useful, actually, to read the work of people in some detail before making snap judgements on this. Try the last six of my books on this, and you will see what I mean by the white racial frame….
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When you need 6 books to explain your white racial frame concept thats your problem, not mine.
But it seems to me that for whatever reason you seem to try to seperate whiteness from Eurocentrism, however that works.
But because of my not so white racial frame I am not so impressed by white men studying and writing lots of books and then becoming defensive when there are people who don’t necessarily agree, based on this what you write here.
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some adds:
racial segregation laws existed in Nazi-Germany, in South Africa, in Australia, in Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe) and others, Europeans established everywhere ‘whiteness’
etc.
Europeans = whites (who is white can shift to a certain degree and varying from some country to another). Eurocentrism is considering in earlier times Europe and today the Western world, European thought and behavior and European people as the center. Whiteness is inseparable from Eurocentrism, because Eurocentrism is the root of whiteness.